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Protecting My Woodland Setting Part ll

I have now had over a week to live with the real possibility of losing 42 trees from in front of my home. The good news is they are still there. The bad news is that they are all marked for destruction with fluorescent “H”s spray-painted on their trunks.

Our understanding is that sometime within the next three months, they will be gone and virtually everyone we have spoken to says that there is not a thing that we can do about it. There are a different set of rules for Hydro than there are for myself and other residents of King Township and while most feel there is little hope, I can’t sit back and accept that fact.

My first call was to a very wise and knowledgeable champion of Nature; Gloria Marsh, who is the Executive Director of the York Region Environmental Alliance, a member of the Green Connections networking group I belong to. She has had a great deal of experience in the past with similar situations and while completely sympathetic with my situation, reiterated that the future for these poor trees looks bleak! However…… you know you are speaking with a true professional when they come up with a solution that had never even entered your own overactive and frantic mind.

Gloria suggested that what we approach Hydro with the idea that for now, we actually “dead head” the tree tops away from the wires. This would look unsightly for this year but that next year the branches below the cut would fill in and then the chopped-off trunk would be softened by surrounding green. In the meantime, when spring arrives, we would plant fairly mature evergreens in a naturalized zig-zag pattern behind these doomed trees. Then in about 5-6 years when the marked trees would again reach the wires, they could then be removed, exposing a new evergreen forest edge and the privacy we so desperately wish to preserve.

So….. the moral of the story so far is: “When you can’t see the forest for the trees, don’t panic, find an expert!

Stay tuned next week and I will let you know what Hydro thinks of this ingenious idea.

Until then, I love getting feedback. Do you have any other great ideas? Here on my blog, you will get commentluv. That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.